Slow Horses (2022) Review: MI5's Rejects Steal the Show

Is Slow Horses worth watching?

Yes. Slow Horses is the best spy drama on television right now, a lean, darkly funny thriller that gets better with almost every season. Its secret is perspective: instead of the corridors of power, it watches British intelligence from the desk of the people MI5 has written off. The only real caveat is that the humour is coarse and the violence sudden, and viewers who want the polished glamour of classic espionage should look elsewhere.

What is Slow Horses about?

Slow Horses is set in Slough House, a shabby London office where MI5 parks the officers it cannot quite fire. They are supposed to push paper until they quit. Presiding over them is Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a scruffy, rude and alarmingly sharp veteran of the Cold War who seems to have given up on everything except insulting his staff. The series opens with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), a young agent exiled after a humiliating training failure, who is desperate to claw his way back to the service’s headquarters at Regent’s Park.

The trouble is that the rejects keep stumbling into live operations, usually ones the Park would rather manage quietly. On the other side of that divide sits Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), MI5’s ambitious deputy chief, for whom every crisis is also a career opportunity.

The series is adapted from Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and written for television by Will Smith, the British comedy writer. It is a UK production in English for Apple TV+. This review covers seasons 1 to 5, 30 episodes in all; the show is ongoing, and each season adapts one book as a self-contained case.

Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is a great TV creation

Oldman once played George Smiley, the quiet genius of le Carré’s circus. Lamb is his grubby opposite, a man who uses his own repulsiveness as camouflage. He belches, smokes, sleeps at his desk and says unforgivable things, and the performance is so precise that each insult doubles as a tell about what Lamb has noticed and nobody else has. When the mask slips for a second, the effect is startling.

Kristin Scott Thomas is his perfect sparring partner. Her Taverner is immaculate, clipped and utterly ruthless, and their scenes together play like a chess match between two people who despise and respect each other in equal measure. Saskia Reeves gives Catherine Standish, Lamb’s long-suffering second, a quiet dignity that keeps the office from becoming a cartoon, while Jack Lowden makes River’s earnestness both endearing and slightly ridiculous.

Six episodes, one operation, no padding

Adapting a novel per season gives the show a shape that much streaming drama lacks. Each run of six episodes sets up a crisis, tightens it steadily and pays it off, with no filler episodes and no mythology to track. The action is scrappy rather than slick, because the Slough House agents are rarely good enough for the fights they fall into, and that makes it genuinely tense.

The humour is what gives the series its flavour. The banter is vicious, but it comes from people who know they have been discarded, so the jokes carry a melancholy edge. Beneath the thriller plots runs a satire of a security state more interested in protecting its own reputation than anyone else. Even the theme song, sung by Mick Jagger, sounds suitably worn out and sardonic.

Where it can stumble

Not every season is equally strong. The plots rely on a fair amount of coincidence, and some antagonists are thinner than the regulars they are up against. A few supporting members of Slough House get less to do than they deserve, and the comedy occasionally undercuts moments that needed more weight. None of these problems lasts long enough to hurt the show.

Who should watch Slow Horses?

It is ideal for fans of British thrillers and spy stories who enjoy wit as much as action. With six episodes of under an hour per season, each season makes an easy weekend watch, and new viewers should start at season 1, since character relationships build across the run. Expect strong language, crude humour, bursts of graphic violence and threat, and themes of terrorism.

If it clicks, try these next:

• The Night Manager for glossier, more traditional British espionage, full of luxury and menace.
• Inside No. 9 for the same blend of pitch-black comedy and sudden danger in a short-form package.

The verdict

Slow Horses is that rare series that improves as it goes, sharper and funnier with every case. Gary Oldman gives one of the great television performances of the decade, and the show around him has the discipline to match. For anyone who likes spy stories, it is unmissable.

Rating: 4.5/5